Nixon in Winter by Monica Crowley His Final Revelations about Diplomacy, Watergate, and Life out of the Arena

During the last four years of Richard Nixon's life, Monica Crowley served as his foreign-policy assistant and political confidante--a trusted member of the small circle of advisors with whom he shared hours of daily one-on-one conversations.

This is the remarkable story of the final public and private years of the thirty-seventh president, based on full reconstructions of the conversations Crowley had with him at the time.

Nixon in Winter puts the reader behind the scenes with the former president, allowing a unique glimpse into his life as elder statesman and private citizen. It is filled with dramatic revelations about Nixon's influential role on the world stage, whether taking action himself to guide American foreign policy or whispering advice to his successors. His hardheaded views on the end of the cold war, his emotional final trip to China, his powerful inside role during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, and his poignant thoughts on the legacy of Vietnam are recounted--as well as his frustrations with being out of power and with foreign-policy failures of Presidents Bush and Clinton.

With astonishing candor, Nixon also shares his final, startling thoughts on Watergate, including his assessments of all the major players in the scandal and what he would--and would not--have done differently. And he offers an uncompromising look at the way the sexual scandals surrounding the Kennedys, Bill Clinton, Clarence Thomas, and Robert Packwood have changed the politics of scandal.

Above all, he reveals a more private self than ever before as he reflects on his faith and his family, copes with the death of Mrs. Nixon, and struggles to deal with aging and the only force that could ultimately destroy him: death.

Nixon in Winter is the inside story of his last years. It is an unprecedented firsthand portrait, private, provocative, and candid.

MONICA CROWLEY was foreign-policy assistant to former President Richard Nixon in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, from June 1990 to April 1994. She served as an editorial adviser and research consultant for Seize the Moment in 1992 and Beyond Peace in 1994, and traveled abroad extensively with him in 1993. She is now working toward her Ph.D. in international affairs at Columbia University. She lives in New Jersey.

Publishers Weekly

In this plodding sequel to Nixon Off the Record (1996), Crowley, confidante, research consultant, travel companion and foreign policy assistant to the former president from 1990 until his death in 1994, records her conversations with him based on her daily diary.